Good news for anyone who thought the shooting range was too safe! New testing shows that every pull of the trigger inside an indoor range sends a concussive shock wave into your skull. The bigger the gun, the bigger the brain smoothie.
There are thousands of indoor ranges in the United States, and many have a similar layout: A row of lanes separated by bullet-resistant walls. Soft, shock-absorbent paneling is not standard and without it the booth can act like an echo chamber, reflecting more of the blast waves back toward the shooter.
The potential for harm from blast waves gets almost no attention from the shooting public, even though people can experience concussion-like symptoms after a day at the range, said Jeff Balcourt, who is an acoustic consultant for the National Shooting Sports Foundation and a designer of indoor ranges for Balco Defense Company.
"It's one of those unspoken things," he said. "You don't realize that after a whole day of shooting, you have that ringing in your ears and that headache."
New York Times
Reporters used the same sensors the military uses to measure blast waves and found that indoor range booths bounce the pressure back at shooters, doubling or tripling the force. Fire a .50 cal and you're over the limit that soldiers call safe. Fire a few dozen rounds from an AR, and you can give yourself the kind of cognitive hangover doctors prefer to diagnose post-war.
If you are going to take target practice at an indoor range, make sure the barrel of your weapon extends past the walls of the booth. Also, keep it short and don't spend a couple of hours inside an indoor range. Go to outdoor ranges whenever possible. I have long used target practice as a form of therapy; now I realize it might be adding to the load of things that drive me to therapy.
Previously:
• Crossbow pistol – a powerful weapon that is great fun for target practice
• Ancient speed-shooting archery technique revived by amazing LARPer whose videos will blow your mind
